Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Mada Masr

Sunday December 14, 2014

Jano Charbel

Security forces raided and closed what they described as the “atheists’
café” in the Abdeen neighborhood of downtown Cairo, municipal
authorities announced Sunday.

The café has also been described as a den for “Satan worshippers.”

The closure spurred a reaction on social networking sites, with “atheists’ café” trending nationwide.
The mainstream media portal Sada al-Balad reported on Sunday that the coffee shop was raided and demolished.

Gamal Mohie, chief of the Abdeen Municipality, told Mada Masr that the
coffee shop in question was not raided on Sunday, but one month earlier,
on November 10.

“There was no demolition involved, only confiscation of the coffee
shop’s property. This was all done in accordance with the law and legal
procedures,” Mohie clarified, adding that the only person arrested
during the raid was the owner, “as his coffee shop was unauthorized,
unlicensed, and also because drugs were found inside.”

The café had originally been licensed as an import/export and trade
office, Mohie explained, adding, “There was no sign reading ‘atheists’
café’ outside, as nobody would put up such a public announcement.
However, it was popularly known as a place for Satan worship, rituals
and dances. There were also Satanic drawings at the entrance.”

The police chief did not explain how or why atheists might be
worshiping Satan in a coffee shop. Atheists deny the existence of both
God and Satan, as they deny the existence of both heaven and hell.

The municipal official said the “atheists’ café” was located at 61
Falaky Street in downtown Cairo. He added that it was raided last month,
“following noise complaints from local residents. It was later
shuttered and sealed off with red wax.”

In response to the news published in the Sada al-Balad portal, social
networking sites were flooded with satirical comments regarding the
actions of the authorities against perceived atheism.

One Twitter user commented that in light of this incident, “authorities might storm the Café of Vampires very soon.”

Another Twitter user sarcastically commented, “Religion has been
introduced to Falaky Street during the reign of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.”
Another wrote, “The ruling regime has proven to be a bunch of comedians …
Even funnier than the Brotherhood.”

Scores of other users criticized the effectiveness of closing coffee
shops as part of the state’s attempt to eliminate the phenomenon of
atheism in Egypt.

On Wednesday, religious authorities — citing an alleged survey — announced that Egypt has a total of 866 atheists, a figure which has widely been dismissed as baseless.

Some religious authorities announced outreach programs to eradicate
atheism nationwide. This year, Muslim and Christian clerics,
alongside police forces, have established committees and launched campaigns to rid the country of atheism.

Being an atheist is not criminalized by Egyptian law, although Article
98(f) of the Penal Code stipulates that individuals found guilty by a
court of law of defaming, insulting or ridiculing the heavenly
(Abrahamic) religions are to be issued prison sentences ranging from six
months to five years, and/or fines of LE500 to 1,000.

Ahmed Douma was found to have “insulted the court” after he accused the judge of making anti-opposition comments on Facebook.

David Mack

December 9, 2014

One of the more prominent young democracy
activists in Egypt, Ahmed Douma, was sentenced to three years in jail on
Tuesday for contempt of court, multipleoutletshave reported.

Douma, an activist aligned with Egypt’s secular and liberal democracy
movement, was jailed for “insulting the court” after he accused Judge
Mohamed Nagy Shehata of bias against the opposition.

He questioned whether the judge was using a Facebook account to
denounce opposition members, a popular theory among activists on social
media.

The judge reportedly denied having an account,
saying only people like Douma and “his friends” use the site, according
to the English-language site Ahram Online.

The judge then found Douma to be in contempt of court, imposing the
jail sentence and fining him almost $1,400. Douma responded by shouting,
“Down, down, military rule!” from his court-room cage, according to Reuters.

Douma had been on trial with more than 260 other defendants, accused of attacking a government building in December 2011.

He was a leading figure in the 2011 uprising that toppled former
leader Hosni Mubarak, but also took part in later demonstrations against
Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, as well as the current role played by
the military in Egypt.

In June, Judge Mohamed Nagy Shehata also presided over the notorious trial
in which three Al Jazeera journalists – an Australian, a Canadian, and
an Egyptian – were jailed from seven to 10 years – on evidence widely
denounced as ridiculous – for supposedly supporting the Muslim
Brotherhood.

Last week, Shehata sentenced 188 defendants to death for an alleged attack on a police station in 2013.

Mada Masr

Monday - December 8, 2014

Dozens of men were arrested on "perversion" charges in a bathhouse in
downtown Cairo’s Ramses area on Sunday, according to broadcast
journalist Mona Iraqi, who filmed the security raid.

Iraqi, a presenter on “Al-Mestakhabi” (The Hidden), an investigative
journalism show that broadcasts on the privately owned channel Al-Qahera
wal Nas, wrote on her Facebook page that she and her team had been
investigating the bathhouse, alleging it was a “den of illegal gay sex
workers.”

“Today is one of Al-Mestakhabi’s good days — we have to share with you a
new and big victory for the program. Al-Mestakhabi managed to shut down
a den of group sex for men, and they were all arrested red-handed,” she
wrote.

“Success is great and achieving goals are greater,” she added.

Iraqi also posted photos showing dozens of almost-naked men being
arrested in the public bathhouse, which she alleged was a popular site
for both Egyptian and foreign gay men. She further accused the
60-year-old manager of running a sex ring.

Al-Mestakhabi reporters secretly infiltrated the bathhouse and filmed
what Iraqi described as “gay sex parties,” as well as the owner’s
“confessions.”

The owner of the bathhouse had kicked Iraqi and her team out of his establishment before security forces conducted the raid.

The first episode on the investigation was to be aired next week, but
Iraqi claimed the broadcast would be postponed “to give police forces
the chance to raid the bathhouse and arrest those involved.”

Human rights activists and social media users took to the Internet to
lambaste Iraqi’s Facebook report, decrying the journalist’s cooperation
with police forces as a flagrant violation of citizens’ personal rights.

Homosexuality is not a crime according to the Egyptian Penal Code, and
furthermore, Iraqi did not prove any prostitution had occurred in the
bathhouse, rights activist Sherif Azer wrote in response to Iraqi’s
post.

Responding to the attacks, Iraqi claimed that the investigation was
part of her program’s work on social groups that are most vulnerable to
AIDS, as International AIDS Awareness Day was December 1.

“In case of public indecency, it has to be done in public. Is the
bathhouse a public place? What are the accusations you presented to the
prosecution so that they are arrested? If they [the detained men] are
really patients of AIDS, they should be treated as patients not
criminals and given proper medical support even if it is contagious. Do
you accept seeing one of your family members who has a serious disease
to be arrested naked by police?” Azer continued.

Others questioned Iraqi’s ethics and journalistic reputation given her cooperation with the police.

“The airing of the two-episodes investigation was adjourned for human,
ethical and security reasons, and all the incident’s inside affairs
shall be aired in a third episode. We did our work with the highest
levels of professionalism and accuracy, and we urge the public not to
judge the episodes positively or negatively before watching them,” Iraqi
defended herself in a statement released on Monday.

But internet commentators continued to castigate the journalist,
accusing her of heedlessly destroying the reputation of the arrested men
— whose faces appeared in the photos she posted on her Facebook page —
in her pursuit of fame.

US-based rights activist Scott Long blogged about the incident in his
blog, the Paper Bird, and suggested the possibility of a
government-sponsored campaign against gay rights.

“What’s clear is that another pro-Sisi media organ is working in close
collusion with security forces, to produce a sensational show about sex
with appalling and terrifying images, to invade privacy and engorge the
prisons and destroy innocent people’s lives,” he wrote.

Long highlighted another recent incident in which eight men appearing
in a video that allegedly portrayed a gay marriage ceremony were
sentenced to three years in prison on charges of perversion.

“This message about ‘networks’ is a menacing constant. Egypt’s
powers-that-be treat homosexuality and gender dissidence as political,
and — like any kind of politics under an ever more constricting
dictatorship — conspiratorial and sinister,” Long added.

An Egyptian criminal court handed down provisional death
sentences against 188 defendants on December 2, 2014, the third such
mass sentencing this year.

Judge Nagi Shehata imposed the sentences after he convicted all the
defendants of participating in an August 2013 attack on a police station
in the governorate of Giza, which came to be known as the “Kerdasa
massacre” after the neighborhood where it took place. Eleven police
officers and two civilians died in the attack, which occurred shortly
after the military coup that ousted Mohamed Morsy, Egypt’s first democratically elected president.

“Mass death sentences are fast losing Egypt’s judiciary whatever reputation for independence it once had,” said Sarah Leah Whitson,
Middle East and North Africa director. “Instead of weighing the
evidence against each person, judges are convicting defendants en masse
without regard for fair trial standards.”

The court imposed provisional death sentences, meaning that they will be
sent to the Grand Mufti, Egypt’s highest religious authority, for his
legally required evaluation and advice on whether they should stand. Of
the 188 defendants, 135 were present in custody; 53 others were tried
and sentenced in absentia. Shehata set a January 24 court date to
finalize the sentences.

Prior to this case, a judge in the governorate of Minya imposed 1,212
death sentences in March and April after two trials arising from other
attacks on police stations in 2013 that left at least two police
officers dead. After receiving the Grand Mufti’s opinion, the judge
approved 220 of those death sentences. The judge sentenced 495 other
defendants to life in prison.

These mass trials have principally targeted members of the Muslim
Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition movement, which the government
designated a terrorist group in 2013 after Morsy’s overthrow. Among
those sentenced to death in Minya was the Brotherhood’s supreme guide,
Mohamed Badie.

The Kerdasa trial also highlights the role of what some legal analysts
have labeled Egypt’s new “special circuits”: judges assigned to handle
cases that involve terrorism or organized violence or which are deemed
sensitive to national security. In December 2013, the Cairo Court of
Appeals appointed six judges from the Cairo and Giza governorates to
special circuits. These judges convene for two weeks each month in
Cairo’s Police Academy to hear such cases, according to the state-run al-Ahram newspaper.

Shehata presided over the Kerdasa trial in his capacity as a special
circuit judge, hearing the case in the Police Academy. He has presided
over a number of other high-profile proceedings. In June, he sentenced
three Al Jazeera English journalists to between 7 and 10 years in prison
after a trial that was conspicuously unfair.

He is also presiding over
the trial of 270 protesters accused of attacking the cabinet offices
during a protest in December 2011, among them prominent activist and
hunger striker Ahmed Douma, whom Shehata has not allowed to be moved to a
hospital. Shehata has also ordered prosecutors to investigate at least
five defense lawyers in that case, including prominent human rights
defender Ragia Omran and former presidential candidate Khaled Ali. On
November 22, Egypt’s Lawyers Syndicate issued a statement
criticizing Shehata for “terrorizing” the defense team and said it
supported their decision to withdraw from the case in protest.

A police officer who witnessed the Kerdasa attack told the Associated Press
that a mob stormed the police station with rocket-propelled grenades,
automatic weapons, and Molotov cocktails. Graphic video aired by
Egyptian media showed slain police officers slumped against one another in a soot-stained room. Local residents, however, told a reporter from El Badil
newspaper that police had killed 12 young protesters from Kerdasa and
nearby villages between the July 2013 coup and the violent dispersal of
pro-Morsy sit-ins that August.

When residents protested outside the
police station demanding that security forces withdraw, they told the
reporter, police opened fire on the crowd. The residents claimed that an
armed group from outside the village launched the deadly attack but
admitted some in Kerdasa provided assistance.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to
which Egypt is a party, limits the circumstances in which a state can
impose the death sentence. The United Nations Human Rights Committee,
the international expert body that interprets the ICCPR, has said that
“in cases of trials leading to the imposition of the death penalty,
scrupulous respect of the guarantees of fair trial is particularly
important.” Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all
circumstances as an inherently cruel and inhumane punishment.

“Clearly, serious crimes were committed during the Kerdasa attack and
those responsible should be given a fair trial,” Whitson said. “But it
isn’t right or fair to try everyone in mass proceedings. And no trial
that’s so blatantly unjust should send someone to the gallows.”